BOOK PRAISE

Since 9/11, our generation of warfighters—the real 1% of Americans—stared down enemies abroad while overcoming cynics and critics at home. In both places, Pete Hegseth has been on the front lines fighting for both the warriors and the wars they fight. Pete challenges the tired orthodoxy about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and after reading this book—you’ll never look at those conflicts the same way. This book gives voice to our generation’s fight and makes a convincing case for applying the lessons we learned—strength, resolve, and leadership, among the many—to a continued world of dangerous threats. If you love America, and are concerned about our future, you should read this book.

— Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Iraq and Afghanistan veteran

This book is not a memoir—it’s a call to arms. Warrior Pete Hegseth makes a powerful case, using a historic speech and his own life experience on the battlefield, for renewing the conservative cause at home and reinvigorating American leadership abroad. As history marches on, the world remains a dangerous place—Pete lights the way toward another essential, free and powerful American century.

Every page, clear and concise, forces the reader to pause and to think: What sort of America do we want, and how do we get there? A smart, combat-proven soldier with a resounding message, Pete Hegseth is a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt. Not for him any easy way out. He’s the real deal, and he writes with verve.

— Bing West, bestselling author of One Million Steps: a Marine Platoon at War

Pete Hegseth’s In the Arena is a 9-11 Soldier’s clear-eyed perspective on the challenges we face in a new world disorder. It’s also a clarion call for “We The People” to save our Republic. If you care about your family’s future; before the next election, you need to read this book!

— LtCol Oliver North USMC (Ret), host of War Stories on FOX News Channel and New York Times bestselling author of the American Heroes book series

America needs this book now more than ever. Pete Hegseth brilliantly resurrects one of the finest speeches in history and illustrates how a great republic is maintained though citizenry, family, honesty and patriotism. We are living in a time where unemployed activists, protesters without character and weak leaders are trying to fundamentally change our country. Weakness is dangerous; we need justice first and peace later.

Hegseth breaks down the poignant truths of an iconic American hero. This is a must read for anybody who desires to know what America really stands for and the underlying principles that make our country great. Teddy Roosevelt was a great president and his words still mean as much today, maybe even more so, as they did last century.

— Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Iraq and Afghanistan veteran

Every time Pete Hegseth comes on FOX News, I stop what I’m doing—and listen. His experience, intelligence, and passion jump through the television. The same goes for the pages of In the Arena. This compelling book tells the hard truths—from someone who’s been there—about what American needs, at home and overseas, to make the 21st century an American century. A must-read for patriots who want to fight for a free and strong America.

— Kimberly Guilfoyle, co-host of FOX News’ The Five and author of Making the Case

In the Arena is a timely reminder of citizenship’s call to defend the American experiment, as Pete Hegseth did personally in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pete outlines the modern meaning of TR’s “Citizenship in a Republic” speech, famous for the “man in the arena.” He reminds us we’re each capable of the enduring commitment to advance freedom, whether through military service or by pursuing the American dream here at home.

— Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK), Iraq and Afghanistan veteran

With America’s free society being strangled by progressives and bureaucrats at home and America’s leadership assaulted by Islamists and globalists abroad, Pete Hegseth lays out a citizen-led roadmap for rejecting decline and forging another American century.

Citizenship, strength and action”—that is the virtuous life of an American in the arena. It is the life Pete Hegseth, combat veteran and authentic American hero, embodies. In this engaging, well-written book, drawing on the courageous virtues Teddy Roosevelt championed a century ago, Hegseth exhorts America to renew herself. It is a challenge…and an inspiration.

Pete Hegseth is a patriot and outstanding public servant who has spent his life ‘In the Arena’—serving in uniform, fighting for our veterans and taking a stand for strong American leadership. Invoking the words of one of my personal heroes, Teddy Roosevelt, Pete makes an important case for others to join him in the area by being good and engaged citizens in their communities at home and around the world. ‘In the Arena’ is a must-read that underscores our collective responsibility to restore America’s role as an exceptional and indispensable global leader.

— Senator John McCain (R-AZ)

A wake up call from an American patriot, soldier, and father that our nation’s greatness depends on each one of us getting into the fight.

— Buck Sexton, The Blaze radio and television host and former CIA officer

Be careful picking up this book, because it will motivate you to take action. Like Teddy Roosevelt’s stirring speech, this book grabs you by the shirt collar and asks—are you in the arena? My good friend Pete Hegseth makes an impassioned and informed case for a tough-minded foreign policy as only he can. Pete already went to war for us—read In the Arena and find out why.

Over the past decade, I’ve been immensely proud of the service and witness of my former student Pete Hegseth—a man who is “in the arena” defending the moral and constitutional principles at the foundation of the American experiment in ordered liberty. This citizen-soldier, who was among those who bravely risked their lives for our beloved nation in Iraq and Afghanistan, has now given us a fine book explaining what it means to be “in the arena” and why it is critical for all of us to stand up and speak out for limited government, fidelity to the Constitution and the fundamental freedoms it protects, the sanctity of human life in all stages and conditions, strong marriage-based families and a vibrant civil society, personal responsibility, and armed forces second to none in ability and willingness to defend the nation.

— Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University and author of Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism

Pete Hegseth—combat veteran, husband, father, American—writes how his life has been animated by 140-words spoken by Theodore Roosevelt. This is more than a memoir of service in a dangerous time for our country, however. It is also a call of a true patriot for all Americans to heed TR’s challenge and take up the task of restoring American exceptionalism before it is too late.

— Karl Rove

Pete Hegseth has written a contemporary update to Theodore Roosevelt’s iconic “man in the arena” speech, one that makes for insightful and important reading. Especially as we look forward to what will hopefully be a new day for American national security, Pete makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing public debate.

— Ambassador John Bolton, Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

Pete Hegseth just can’t seem to stop serving his country. He has defended America and then served its defenders. And now, in this extraordinary book, he shows how civic rhetoric, properly understood, can help recover civic spirit. This intellectual case for active patriotism could hardly be more timely.

— Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs

Pete Hegseth has written a book that’s at once informative and inspiring, educational and captivating. A soldier himself, he reminds an allegedly ‘war weary’ public that a dangerous world requires American leadership and strength. His hero Teddy Roosevelt would have enjoyed it. So will you.

— William Kristol, Editor of The Weekly Standard

Pete Hegseth has spent a lot of time on battlefields—both metaphorical ones in Washington, and actual ones in Iraq and Afghanistan—and he’s returned with a gritty and fascinating critique of a coddled, entitled—and therefore, imperiled—America in the age of Obama. The result is this book. Buy a copy. You’ll come away stronger.

A compelling book from a rising young conservative star. Pete Hegseth has faced the enemies of civilization in Iraq and the enemies of democracy in Washington, and his personal journey has led him to demand practical steps to put our country on course toward “a more perfect union” again. In an age of toxic fluff, Hegseth delivers substance: a stand-up work from an upstanding patriot.

Pete Hegseth knows what it is to fight for this country and for its ideals. He has written an impassioned, wide-ranging book that is a rallying cry for engaged patriots to get in the arena, where we belong.